Experimental determination of plastic strain in the extrusion process

Simulating strain requires experimental validation. In this work, a method for the non-destructive determination of plastic strain in an extruded tube profile is presented. A copper coating, which deforms with the billet material, was used in the developed non-destructive method and was detected by computed tomography (CT) to analyze the deformation. The pattern was applied on cast billet halves (in the longitudinal direction) by a plasma coating technology. It was thus possible to determine the deformation of the pattern during the extrusion process in the billet as well as in the final profile without disassembling the extruded parts. A comparison of specimen using two different patterns shows the superiority of the simpler pattern consisting of only cross markers.